The Real Deal New York

Red Hook residents recoil from plans for pricey rehab center

Urban Recovery House, a for-profit drug and alcohol abuse rehabilitation center, plans to open a 20,000-square-foot inpatient treatment facility on Beard Street in Red Hook, and local residents aren’t happy.

The area once had major issues with drugs, residents say, and they are uneasy about the effect the pricey 25- to 30-bed treatment center might have on the neighborhood.

“We went through many years of seeing drug addicts on the street and we had a fight going on to clean this neighborhood up,” Judy Reis, who grew up in Red Hook and works at Public School 15, said at a Community Board 6 meeting Wednesday. Of concern, she and other critics said, was the impact patients leaving the facility and going into the neighborhood might have on the area.

The planned four-story center would be the Brooklyn-based company’s first venture, modeled on a plan that could cost patients tens of thousands of dollars, the New York Daily News reported.

The state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services must provide Urban Recovery House with a license, and the company’s founders said they would delay their application until April in response to demands for more community outreach.

Red Hook, they said in Wednesday’s meeting, is the perfect place for the “holistic” rehab, which would offer individual and group counseling, 12-step meetings, therapy, acupuncture and yoga. [NYDN] — Julie Strickland